Thursday, April 17, 2014

PHENOMENOLOGY OF CALIFORNICATION

The
protagonists of the series are very interesting because they cover social roles
which are typical of the Western World, particularly in the U.S.

In a very
superficial, wannabe hedonistic and hectic reality as that of the Los Angeles
substrate what emerges is the desecrating element of the creators; sometimes it
appears even excessive: extinguishing a cigarette in the holy water, rolling joints
using pages torn from the Holy Bible, oral sex in a church; just to demystify
the creed of the naive Christians.

There's also another
kind of demystification, the one which concerns Hollywood stars.

Writers,
agents, producers, actors and rock stars appear as an absolute fraud. The only
thing they aspire to in life is success, to be considered more than their competitors.
There ‘s no passion for their
profession, if it ever existed as an initial impetus to pursue a career
it quickly faded into pure vanity: all they want is alcohol, drugs and
easy women who never wonder whether or
not it would be appropriate to satisfy the odd whims of "the artists" .

The world
around Hank is made of cocaine-addicted producers, alcoholic / toxic artists,
vicious individuals with many perversions and not much virtue.

Harry James
"Hank" Moody, on the other hand, is not superficial in spite of
living in such a world. He is light and enjoyable as an ideal road trip companion,
but he has a soul and feelings for his lifelong girlfriend, his daughter, his
agent.

His
spontaneity is his strength but also his limit: the former is represented by
his ability to empathize with almost every person he comes across; the latter
is manifested in his almost total lack of will, resulting in a natural
unreliability.

He’s got the
classic traits of the damned, a post-modern version of Charles Bukowski:
talented, aloof, sincere, spontaneous, irritating, conceited, narcissistic
though not overly vain

The credit he’s
given originates almost exclusively from his ability to feel emotions, show
them and transmit them without filters.

The opposite
of the “celebrities” who show humanity only when in the midst of crisis, often
due to lack of opiates; in those rare moments they admit of being spoiled kids,
unable to live in the real world and collapsing on the role guaranteed to them
by their fans, another category that is massacred for their naivety: they
believe in people who are miserable.

Charlie
Runkle, Moody 's best friend and agent, is an ambivalent character who tries to
navigate the stormy seas of artist representation in Hollywood. On the one hand
he bends to the will of his odd clients, on the other hand he tries to act like
a shark to get what his clients want, in the name of that 10% on their earnings
that allows him to live the California dream: beautiful cars, expensive villas,
young and uninhibited girls who see him as a means to enter the world of
cinema. When he’s given the opportunity to stop for a moment he realizes the
senselessness of running after this hedonistic world, and that the happiest
phase of his life was the one with his ex-wife.

Karen, Moody's
lifelong love, despite being free from defects, looks like an alien because of her
normality shown in contexts where even university professors are twisted stoners
with no predictable values. Architects of houses worth millions and not attracted to drugs (except the occasional marijuana and booze) she looks like a monster of virtue in comparison to the vicious inhabitants of Beverly Hills.

Marcy, Runkle’s
on and off wife, alternates an extreme cynicism to a crude and funny
spontaneity. Comfortable in any Californian context, she shows how every woman
can be a femme fatale for rich and creepy producers, as well as a whim for the
"artists ".

Rebecca Moody,
the only child of Hank and Karen, is nothing but the product of that reality she
has ever breathed: intelligent and inhibited
by her maternal modesty, she tries to emulate her father by experiencing sex, drugs
and rock & roll, resulting dystonic. Being the daughter of a writer of
(discrete) success creates the classic complex that leads her to try following
the footsteps of her father though not having the same natural talent.

The overall
image is a substrate of failures posing as stars, having fans that allow them
to take themselves a little too seriously. The mechanism of the star system is
proposed as extremely perverse: on the one hand we see the misery of the “celebrities”,
on the other hand the same people struggle not to fall off this system risking to
fade into anonymity, a perspective which would make them even more miserable
than what they are already.

As per this
TV show common people shouldn’t dream too much of a life style that exists only
in their mind